Article on Annie Dookhan, Sonja Faraz and other employees of U.S. labs whose forensic fraud has been exposed contains a comment which raises questions about the effectiveness of regulation: "The majority of U.S. labs where forensic fraud has been exposed have been formally accredited." HL);

STORY: "Crime labs still unregulated despite scandal," published by Allgov on January 8, 2014;
(Allgov provides  "up-to-date news about more than 340 departments and agencies of the U.S. government, most of which operate under the radar of the media, even when they have annual budgets of billions of dollars);

GIST: "There have been a dozen scandals involving crime labs across the United States in just the past two years, but Congress has yet to take action to stop this problem that has resulted in hundreds of convicted criminals going free.........One forensic consultant, Brent Turvey, has argued that accreditation may not have helped the Massachusetts situation, and perhaps even made it worse. “In the Hinton Lab, if they were accredited, the incentive to commit the kind of fraud that Annie Dookhan was committing would have been higher, because the issue would have been maintaining accreditation,” Turvey told NPR. “In fact, the majority of labs where forensic fraud [is] exposed, the majority of them are ASCLD/LAB accredited.” Congress may address the problem this year, but it is unclear whether any legislation will be adopted to impose more government oversight for crime labs.""

The entire story can be found at: 

http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/crime-labs-still-unregulated-despite-scandals-140108?news=852110

 Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.

I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located  near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.

The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith

Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
 
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
 
I look forward to hearing from readers at:

hlevy15@gmail.com;